


Devoured Dream

by wintersoda97



Series: Various Endings Revolving Around Kiriya's Fate [5]
Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Unreliable Narrator, canon can't make you sad if you write something sadder, rollsafe.jpg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-20 00:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9468383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersoda97/pseuds/wintersoda97
Summary: Kiriya only comes back after the final battle, after Hojo had long lost his smile.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Y’all know that Emu means “eternal dream” right? For the entire series, I’ve dropped the word "dream" in the other drabbles. Wow, so cryptic and I’m tired from midterms and dealing with family, but I still hope you enjoy (;w;)b
> 
> Also, SO to Thanatos for helping me with my writing and self-doubt! You’re the best! <3333

CR and the Ministry of Health have been trying to keep his revival under wraps until they can find a suitable lie to cover it up. Honestly, Kiriya could have come up with something in the time that it took for the board to just come together, but he supposes that everybody needs to be on the same page.

Coming back to life feels like being pulled out of a burning fire and then thrown into the deep ocean. Sure he’s alive, but there’s so much to cover before he can get his feet back on solid ground.

From what Kiriya had gathered, Poppy and another bugster are the only viruses left that had taken over their hosts. Hiiro and Taiga seem to have made amends during the time he was gone, if their working together is any indication.

Their goal is to find a mutation in the virus so that neither humans nor bugsters would have to clash in order to exist.

A strangely, humane goal from the two of them. Perhaps having Poppy around made them both sympathizers, even if they wouldn’t admit it. No matter how long he could have been gone, those two would never admit that they are softies.

They did, however, admit that they were glad Kiriya was back, begrudgingly.

They give him the Bakusou Bike gashat, the Giri Giri Chambura gashat, and his driver back, as well as his own stethoscope.

“We need all the help we can,” each member of CR say, on separate occasions, with a somber look in their eyes.

Emu left CR after the final battle against Gemn.

Too many bad memories, he assumes, but that battle was the reason why Kiriya was able to come back. The CEO had data of every bugster virus and their hosts after Zero Day stored in his hideout.

It stored all the data on the riders that had the surgery as well.

Neither of them had seen each other, alive and well, yet, but everyone at CR tells him not to look for him, either with a words or with a glare. He nods along, pretending to understand.

He doesn’t actively look for him, but he does keep an eye out.

* * *

One day, as Kiriya was strolling between work and home, he sees him.

A blanket of pure white snow covers the park, in complete contrast to the dark night’s sky. The climbing bars, the slide, the carousel, and even the climbing bars are devoid of children. The tree in its center looks as if it had been stripped clean of leaves for the season.

The swing-set is off to the far corner of the park, and that’s where he’s sitting, barely swinging, with his face towards the sky. His eyes are closed, and he looks as if he’s simply feeling the cool winter air on his skin.

It’s almost sad, seeing him like that.

His hair is tousled and slightly shorter than before. Wearing rings and headphones as accessories, he pulls off the “rebel in a suit” look well. Although, it’s quite a dramatic change from his usual colorful attire.

His death may have had an influence, Kiriya assumes.

That and a whole other set of changes in the former doctor.

Maybe revealing himself could bring him back to the right path, but what should he say? He’s been gone for too long. Calling him “Dr. Hojo” could have an opposite effect on him, and calling him “ace” feels too impersonal now.

“Yo, Emu.” The name just _feels_ right.

He slowly opens his eyes and turns around in response to hearing the name Emu. The moment he sees him, his eyes glow, as they do whenever Emu finds an answer to his patients’ troubles, “Kiriya, you’re--”

He doesn’t say alive; he doesn’t say back; he doesn’t even finish his sentence.

He runs to him in a mad dash and wraps his arms around him. Kiriya ignores the strange lack of the usual honorific from him and returns the hug.

“Yeah,” his voice slightly wavers, “I’m back…”

Kiriya tightens the embrace, when he notices him shaking. He doesn’t say anything in response, but Kiriya could feel his shoulder damping. Crying isn’t something he could deal with well, but he has to be here for him. Breaking the hug would be too cruel.

Wiping his tears, he’s the one that breaks the embrace, before shoving Kiriya to the ground.

The sound of snow crunching reverberates in the silence night, as it softens his fall. With a deep frown, his head hangs low; Kiriya could feel his glare, even without eye contact.

Kiriya somewhat expected this, and somewhat hoped for him to be angry.

It’s an easier emotion to deal with.

But he didn’t expect him with the gashacon bugvisor in his hand, and Kiriya never hoped to see him use it.

He raises his face and gives him a scornful, yet somber, look. Arming himself with the weapon, he utters, just like that bugster Graphite, “Cultivate.”

Kiriya could barely see his transformation in the night, but he could see its result.

In a pool of spreading, swarming darkness that seems to host a countless strands of the bugster virus, he stands in command of it, as sharp edges within the mass of tangled wisps. he is draped in a filthy, pink cloak, obscuring a cracked mask, revealing a single eye glowing red.

“Crap,” is all Kiriya could say, as he struggles to get back on his feet. Spinning around to avoid getting hit by a wisp of the bugster murk. Kiriya equips his driver, and instantly jumps from first to third gear.

The Chambara robot deflects the murks’ attacks before joining with Kiriya. In that moment, Kiriya dashes towards him to close the distance. Were it not for the bugvisor on his hand, he wouldn’t be able to identify where the main body is. Splitting his gashacon sparrow into two, he strikes across his chest with the blunt end of the scythe in his left hand, then with the bladed end of his right. Keeping up with his momentum, Kiriya raises him up in the air with a hard uppercut to the stomach, before delivering a round-house kick that hurls him to the tree with a hard thud.

“Who are you?! You can’t be Emu!” Kiriya demands answers. Too much had been kept from him from the others, and he _needs_ to know the truth.

Ignoring his question, the one before Kiriya slowly rises, “Do you know how many nights of sleep he lost because of your ‘death’?”

“Huh?!”

 _'Too many,'_ Kiriya bets.

“How much stress those ‘last words’ put on him?”

_'Too much.'_

He realizes that something’s coming, based on the sound of the snow being pushed aside. He jumps back, barely evading the two masses of bugster viruses attempting to crash into his sides.

The view in front of Kiriya is blocked from the murk, but he’s still able to guard against his surprise attack. His hits are much easier to deal with than Emu’s; his messy, wild swings with the blade of the bugvisor are too wide. Too predictable.

However, the murk is a different story. It could barely be seen in the night, and the sound of fallen snow can only help him so much, when his gashacon sparrow is clashing against the bugvisor. Creating distance would only make things more difficult to see, but he needs it in order to have a critical finish.

It’s not only difficult, but near impossible to do, as he is relentlessly giving chase.

“Because of you, Kiriya-san, everything has changed!”

_'Wait.'_

_'What?'_

In that moment of confusion, he sends Kiriya flying with a series of combined blows.

Kiriya crashes into the swingset.

He sets the configuration for a critical strike on his bugvisor.

“But tonight…” he stretches his arm out, commanding the murk to attack, “I can finally put those worries to rest.”

Too many theories are coming to Kiriya, but he is giving him no breathing room to ponder about them. Trying to deflect the tendrils of murk coming after him with his scythes is tiring him. As much has Kiriya hates to admit it, he is getting overwhelmed.

Should he call for the others? No. Then, they’ll think he was lying again.

Should he go to second gear and make a run for it? No. Unlike the time with Gemn and Dangerous Zombie, he knows he can’t out run him without someone riding him.

Dammit.

Lost in thought, Kiriya didn’t notice him jumping into the air for a drop kick.

_“Critical End!”_

With no way to defend without getting hit by something or evade in time, Kiriya reattached his gashacon sparrow in its bow form as a last ditch attempt to deflect his kick with it.

This situation feels all too similar to Kiriya, but before either of them could connect their strikes--

_“Jet! Critical Strike!”_

\--a flurry of bullets form a protective cover around Kiriya, and he finds himself being lifted out of danger by someone.

“Dammit! How many times have we told you not to go after him?!” Taiga in his level 3 form scolds as he settles upon the top of the slide.

Hiiro, in his level 3 form as well, gracelessly drops Kiriya on the dirt ground, “We didn’t put all that effort to revive you in order to have you fall again.”

Glancing back and forth between the two, Kiriya asks, “You guys know what’s going on?!”

“I-- We--” Regret. Hesitation. Something that Kiriya would never expect out of Hiiro.

“We’ll explain later! Right now we have to--”

Before Taiga could finish his sentence, he finishes recovering from his kick not connecting and sends the virus after the doctors, lifting them high into the air before slamming them into the ground, hard enough to force them out of their transformations.

The three struggle to get back on their feet, and he transforms back into human form. Much more relaxed, he shoots them all a glance, before turning to leave.

“Wait!” Kiriya is barely back on his feet.

He stops dead in his tracks.

Letting out a stream of half asked questions, Kiriya continues, “Who--? What--? Why... Why?!”

Who are you? What are you trying to do? Why do you look so much like...? Why isn’t he here?!

“I’m just a single-existence, looking to dream for an eternity again,” he answers in a bitter tone, his words slowly fading as he teleports to somewhere unknown to them all.

No one knows what to say.

Or what to do.

The sound of Kiriya falling back down breaks the silence. He is on his knees, his arms on the ground, wavering, clutching onto the snow as it slowly melts in his hands. Feeling the others' looks of pity on him, Kiriya shakes his lowered head, looking to find another answer, something other than _this_ to be reality.

When he realizes that there's no other truth out for him to uncover, he just screams.

**Author's Note:**

> This is working under so many headcanons and guess work bc it’s post series... orz
> 
> \- There’s nothing that disproves that the human form of a bugster can’t look like their original host, we’re only shown one bugster that doesn’t look like the host (Graphite). Poppy’s and Parad’s hosts are a mystery, and Dan looks just like he does after turning into a zombie.
> 
> \- M is the original Hojo; Emu is the irregular bugster, and they both have problems with dealing with loneliness; that's all I am going to say about why there's honorific usage and no honorific usage :'3c


End file.
